动物实验 z-bo 2020-09-11 382

　　Some people always look good, some people always yell, some people wake up after a while, but others need to "hibernate". This may be a gene. Recently, scientists have studied several families and discovered a new gene, which is said to be directly related to the amount of sleep an individual needs.

　　"The average person spends one third of their sleep in a lifetime, but our understanding of sleep is indeed lacking. The amazing breakthrough of this research is the neuroscientist Louis Ptácek of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) said:

　　In recent years, there have been many studies on genes related to circadian rhythms. Although completed, little is known about the genes that affect sleep, especially the genes that regulate the amount of sleep the body needs.

　　Ptácek and UCSF geneticist Fu Weihui (both are the main authors of this article, their work involves multiple families, several members of a family sleep only 6 hours a day physically and mentally. The condition is normal, the researchers analyze After the DNA of the family was discovered, the gene ADRB1 that determines sleep time was discovered, and then genetic linkage studies and the entire study were carried out. Exome sequencing showed that these members have rare mutations in the ADRB1 gene, which has not been found before, and the researchers found this mutation. It encodes the β1 adrenergic receptor. We found that it destroys the stability of the protein, thereby affecting the function of the receptor, that is to say, this gene mutation can affect the function of the brain. They carried out this gene mutation on mice A series of experiments found that the average sleep time of these mice was 55 minutes shorter than that of normal mice (people with mutations sleep 55 minutes).

　　Further analysis showed that the expression level of this gene is very high on the back of the pons (part of the brain stem) in mice, responsible for unconscious functions such as breathing, eye movement and sleep. The researchers also found that neurons in this region with the normal ADRB1 gene are not only more active in arousal state, but also more active during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. We also found that neurons with mutated genes are more active than normal neurons and may lead to shorter sleep time. Studying the sleep behavior of mice admits that there are some limitations. For example, mice sleep differently from humans, and they do not sleep continuously like humans. In future studies, the two scientists also plan to further study the function of ADRB1 protein in other parts of the brain and discover other important genes that may be related to more families.